


three-fold utopian dream

by Lire_Casander



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, M/M, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 08:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18279860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: but already i'm wasting away





	three-fold utopian dream

**Author's Note:**

> As always, don't own anything. Characters and lyrics belong to their creators.
> 
> Unbeta'ed. I'm currrently on active search for a beta since I feel like I'm going to start writing more and longer fics may need some special attention. English isn't my first language, so please be forgiving.
> 
> Also, I may be up to taking prompts at my (almost) new and shiny tumblr [lire-casander](https://lire-casander.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> Inspired by _I Miss You_ by Incubus (I stand corrected, not a Lifehouse song), from which I've taken both the title and the summary. Lyrics and video at the end.

It’s almost perverse, the way he remembers a scent he has only smelled so very few times in his life he should not have any recollection of it. If he closes his eyes only for a second he can see the outlines of that jaw, he can hear the breath coming out of that mouth, he can feel the fingertips tracing a pattern on his damaged skin.

He knows it is all a lie – a game his mind is playing with him – but he can’t stop himself from falling into the farce. He lies down in his makeshift bed in the Airstream, surrounded by some pieces of alien technology, tidbits of a life scattered all over the place in unexplainable calculations, and he closes his eyes, trying his best to extricate himself from the reality he lives in these days – making the effort to dive into his memories where he can be happy, where he can feign deserving love.

The memory plays like a broken record, over and over again, from the moment he first saw Alex at school to the last time they argued in the open air of the drive-in. He gets reminded of the bliss, the lust, the pain, the despair, the abandonment. He looks into those impossibly deep eyes that once or twice opened by his side in that very same bed, dreading to wake up himself. For real life is just a mirage of what it should have been, and he is so tired of being tossed around and left behind that all he wants is to just close his eyes in an acetone wrenched dream and never open them again.

He should have known better than to raise his hopes. He should have never believed he was worth anything but becoming a drifter in a world of settlers – a cast out without a family. This planet has only earned him grief, and he has let it take him down until he is drowning in his own breathing. Still, he has been postponing his greatest plan of escaping Earth time and again, for eyes that never looked back long enough to feel like home. But those eyes reflecting the rising sunlight had been his whole life once – waking up next to someone he could relate to, inside and out, like something out worldly, as if they were linked by some sort of cosmic red string attaching them together forever and ever.

If he pokes hard enough in his own mind, he can feel the connection throbbing right where it stands cut off from the other end. It hurts not to be able to reach through, because he feels incomplete most of the time – like he is wandering around in his own head without a purpose, letting the chaos take over. What once music had been able to quiet has been replaced by the anguish of knowing that nothing else – _no one else_ – could ever silence the wreckage inside of him.

He doesn’t plunge into the abyss of his own mind, finally closing his eyes and willing himself to a fistful sleep instead, in the hopes that he can get some rest before facing yet another day without Isobel – yet another full moon without a cure or coming near to finding one.

He dreams of guitars and music, and ridiculously brown eyes boring into his soul just by his side on the bed, swallowing the pain when he wakes up to a lonely trailer and the punch in the gut that is knowing it will always be exactly like this.

He feels as if he’s living in a bad B-series movie where everything repeats itself in turning circles – he wakes up, grabs a beer and sips from a nail polish bottle, throws on a t-shirt and heads off to the hospital, where he sneaks into and allows Liz Ortecho of all people to use him as her lab rat. The things he does for his sister – the things he’d do if he was guaranteed that Isobel might come unscathed out of that pod. He doesn’t stay the night like Max, but he’s also wasting away his own light. 

There is a full month and then some without any other human contact than Liz, outside his scarce visits to the bar. He doesn’t believe himself when he realizes, if only to himself in a low uttering voice in the back of his mind, that he is craving someone’s touch – a touch to breathe him life again.

 _His_ touch.

Those fingers that will never again brush against his chin, that mouth that will never again caress his exposed neck. Somehow he has managed to throw to waste the only good thing he has had in this half human life, although he’s still fighting to grasp the reason why Alex walked away that last time. He knows he doesn’t deserve an explanation – he is not worthy of anything at this point – but it would have been nice to know where he had been at fault so he can at least _try_ to make amends with the world and win that heart back. If it ever was his to hold.

He spends his nights in a drunken haze, perusing through his equations at the same time as he longs for a guitar and a spare pick, looking closely to the pictures he still owns from a past that’s long lost. 

They don’t really find a cure and he is starting to break at his seams, no longer able to contain his pain at the destroyed link that interconnected Isobel and him. It breaks him to be the genius and still to not have a solution at hand to save his sister. He’s always protected her, even from herself, and now he is powerless, useless. What use does a fucking knight in shining armor have when he’s stripped down and bare naked from his strength? His powers are draining him out but he keeps pushing forward, drawing blood, working sleepless nights until he feels his eyes closing on their own accord after long hours of tiring himself all alone in the lab. He grasps the only leftovers of sanity he’s still gathering, and decides that a little alcohol-drenched fun is necessary.

Then that night at the Wild Pony happens – Alex Manes rejecting him without the pyrotechnics he never knew he needed until he couldn’t read the stare gazing back at him, as if they hadn’t known each other. He all but begs Alex, because although he isn’t the pleading kind, he still recognizes when the need to be held is stronger than any drug he can dose himself up with to get through his darkest nights. For the first time in six they collide in the same space at the same time, and all he gets is a whimper instead of a bang, and he’d be lying if he’d say it doesn’t hurt. He also isn’t the lying type but he can’t stand what Alex is latching back at him, so he puts up his macho cowboy swagger mask and smirks, and drinks, and flirts, and wants to crawl under his sheets and cry himself to sleep into the next century.

At least.

Then the trip to Texas happens – Maria DeLuca happens – and he feels emptied and tossed around, because it means nothing and yet he has the feeling that the weight of a whole universe has been dropped on his shoulders. And the pattern echoes the morning after when a sudden surprise visit catches him off guard while sitting on the ledge of his Airstream, still dressed in the sweater from the day before. Hopes lift only to crash and burn once again.

Ever again.

When Alex turns around he falters in his step, bravado upfront and sarcasm ready and handy. He won’t let himself be left out – tossed around – held hostage. He will fight back, bite back, rise and be proud. He doesn’t have anything inside, not anymore, he’s been shrunk into pieces and no one has ever cared enough to patch him up again.

Alex doesn’t run away, but does he punch with his words. They hurt like hell but hug him like heaven, because all he has ever wanted was to be able to talk – though talking isn’t his strong suit. All he’s ever waited for was for Alex to admit to himself his true feelings, so they would be stretched between them and he could touch them and spring them to life.

Cosmic doesn’t even get near to define what they have.

But it hurts like hell to hear past tense where it should always be present and future. He knows he’s not fooling anyone with his pretentious act, Alex can see right through him, and the toll of six weeks without even a single glimpse – the toll of twenty years of hiding his true colors, the toll of ten years of pining after the other half of his broken soul – falls hard on him, leaving him boneless, ridding him of the need to battle out his sins.

So he remains still, arms wide open, bearing his soul and his heart in front of the only human who could stomp on them and crush him with just a word, waiting – hoping this time Alex really doesn’t walk away. And when he finally does, when Alex leaves him hanging by a thread of guilt in his bunker, surrounded by the pieces of a console that are as metaphorical to their relationship as love in times of war can be, he realizes he’s the one pushing Alex away every single time.

For all he has ever wanted was to write _I love you_ in big yellow neon letters across the starry nightly sky, and all he ever does is scream _leave me alone_ with every cell of his impersonation of a human body.

Maybe that’s the only success he’s ever managed to achieve.

So he plunges once again back into work, back into protecting Isobel and Max, back into his calculations, ignoring the gaping hole in his heart and the screaming match in his head, the chaos turning its wheels inside of him, twisting his soul and tormenting him.

Quiet is overrated, anyway, although he would have done anything to keep a little bit of Alex by his side in his quest to discover who he really is, so he can have something to offer back when those eyes stare at him giving him a whole universe to discover.

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> _to see you when I wake up is a gift i didn't think could be real_
> 
>  
> 
> _to know that you feel the same as i do is a three-fold utopian dream_  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> _you do something to me that i can't explain_  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> _so would i be out of line if i said i miss you_  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> _i see your picture_  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> _i smell your skin on the empty pillow next to mine_  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> _you have only been gone ten days_  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> _but already i'm wasting away_  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> _i know i'll see you again whether far or soon_  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> _but i need you to know that i care_  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> _and i miss you ** __**_  
> 
> 
>  __  
>  **  
>  __**  
>   
> 
> 
> _  
> **  
> _  
> _Video[here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhSbi4ZTvQ0)_  
> _  
> **  
>  _  
> _  
> _  
> 


End file.
